


Step By Step My Heart Will Start Melting

by abnormalitywrites



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Captain Swan January Joy, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 09:11:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11399517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abnormalitywrites/pseuds/abnormalitywrites
Summary: ‘My friends persuaded me to offer ‘free hugs’ but I hate being touched, what is this?’ aka the one where Emma can’t let a bet go featuring Killian and onion rings. Title credits go to Julia Morrison Summers' 'Instructions for You'.





	Step By Step My Heart Will Start Melting

**Author's Note:**

> This fic marks my official re-entry into the world of fanfic. I'm super excited to be writing again, so thank you all for reading. 
> 
> Based on the prompt ‘My friends persuaded me to offer ‘free hugs’ but I hate being touched, what is this?’ for CS January Joy 2017.
> 
> Also posted on tumblr (ab-normality) and ff.net (DreamerInHerOwnWorld).

Emma’s New Year’s Resolution is off to a terrible start. It’s just gone 3am on January 1st and she’s already had to fend off three different guys whom her friends have shoved towards her, giving her significant looks.

The party’s starting to wind down, and she’s currently resorted to nursing another beer in the corner of the sofa, watching the parade of drunken college students stumbling out of the apartment door. 

“Emmaaaaaa,” Mary Margaret waltzes towards her across the mostly-deserted room and plops down next to her, eyes shining a little more brightly than usual in her alcohol-induced haze. Her boyfriend David follows her, catching Emma’s eye with a chuckle and settling next to his girlfriend, linking their fingers easily while Mary Margaret continues to smile up at Emma.

“Why’re you all alone?” Mary Margaret asks. Her usual tact has apparently disappeared along with her sobriety.

“I’m not – ” Emma starts, but she’s cut off by Ruby waving towards her as she approaches with yet another man in tow. 

“Emma! Meet Eric,” she announces proudly, thrusting the poor guy forward.

Emma ignores him, fixing Ruby with a glare.

“Rubes, I already said, I’m not interested.”

Ruby just raises her eyebrows encouragingly, ignoring the man’s awkward fidgeting.

“No offense,” Emma adds, throwing a cursory nod to the guy.

“I’ll, uh, Happy New Year,” Eric says, before turning and making a hasty escape through the front door.

“Emma!” Ruby whines, collapsing onto the arm of the sofa, “Do you want to spend your first night of 2017 in a cold, dark bed alone?”

“I just want you guys to stop setting me up with people when I told you I’m not interested,” Emma mutters, glaring darkly into her beer can. Her words must come out harsher than she intended because Ruby doesn’t respond, and maybe she should feel bad but it’s really starting to bug her that her friends are so insistent on setting her up and maybe she wants to be single, okay?

“Emma,” Mary Margaret tries, leaning her head on Emma’s arm, “We just don’t want you to feel left out of our group dates.”

And there’s the reason for her friends’ increasingly aggressive attempts at matchmaking. Mary Margaret and David may have been the world’s most sickeningly adorable couple since their (direct quote) ‘love at first sight’ back in the first week of freshman year, but Ruby’s betrayal as her fellow singleton came as a surprise to them all when Belle came into the picture, the couple becoming official last summer. Since then, Mary Margaret’s obsession with couple dates has led Emma’s friends on a seemingly unstoppable crusade to find her a boyfriend. Hence the New Year’s Resolution to find a way out of this speed-dating hell.

Mary Margaret, David, Ruby and Belle, who has appeared from the kitchen and settled into Ruby’s lap, are all silent for a few moments and Emma feels a little remorseful at being so offended by her friends’ obvious concern for her happiness. 

She regrets any guilt she might be feeling a second later when both Ruby and Mary Margaret throw their arms around her from either side and she stiffens, throwing their arms off. She loves her friends, she really does, but fourteen years of sporadic foster care in between the hell of group homes hasn’t exactly given her a cuddly disposition. Even her adoptive mother Ingrid quickly learned this, making do with affectionate pats on the back instead. Any tendencies towards physical affection which may have lingered were well and truly stamped out by her disaster of a relationship with Neal. Hugs, Emma finds, are often far too full of pity for her liking.

“I don’t feel left out,” Emma insists, draining the rest of her beer and attempting to ignore the sympathy radiating from the cuddly couples on either side of her. “And I don’t want to spend 2017 on yet more awful dates with fucking flying monkeys,” she adds, grimacing at the memory of last Halloween’s guy, who was dressed as a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz and had the grabby hands to match. 

“Okay, okay, we take full responsibility that Walsh was definitely a mistake,” David interrupts as Ruby opens her mouth to argue in her own defense.

“But not every guy we set you up with was that bad, right? Graham was nice,” Mary Margaret joins in, looking at Emma earnestly and so damn hopefully that she starts to feel guilty again. Graham had been nice. Sweet, attractive, gorgeous Irish accent, decent at conversation, actually made it as far as the bedroom, until…

“Graham tried to cuddle after sex,” Emma grumbles, mostly to herself.

Ruby cackles loudly, throwing her head back and almost dislodging Belle from her lap, before suddenly sitting back up and grinning wolfishly.

“Waitttt, I have an idea!” She pauses dramatically, looking around at all of them for effect until she’s satisfied they’re desperate enough for her to explain.

“We get Emma to offer free hugs on campus for a whole week – ” she shoves a hand in Emma’s horrified face before she has chance to protest “ – and if you do it, no cheating, we’ll stop trying to set you up,” she sits back, pulling Belle against her chest in a satisfied self-righteousness.

“You’ll stop forever?” Emma clarifies, hating herself a little bit for engaging, but the temptation is just too strong. Her mental highlights of 2016’s Most Awful Dating Experiences is fast winning her over. A week’s worth of voluntarily offering hugs was definitely not on the cards for her new year, but the idea of the following 51 weeks and beyond of freedom from Mary Margaret’s fussing, David’s overprotectiveness, Ruby’s constant questioning about her sex life, Belle’s stream of endless research about relationship compatibility and a final goodbye to all of their hare-brained scheming makes her feel like she’s about to win the damn lottery.

“Are you saying you’ll do it?” Mary Margaret giggles, eyes wide.

Emma waves goodbye to a substantial portion of her dignity in the name of her sanity for the rest of the year.

“Fine.”

Ruby whoops in triumph and is still bragging half an hour later when she and Emma reach their apartment. She gets a final triumphant grin in with her goodnight before dragging Belle into her bedroom and leaving Emma to collapse on her own bed and curse herself for the fresh hell she’s let herself in for.

 

The first Monday of the semester dawns cold and grey, much like Emma’s mood, which only dampens further as Ruby skips out of her room and thrusts a gigantic piece of cardboard and string in her face. 

“It’s your ‘free hugs’ sign!” she chirps, while Emma contemplates doing something drastic like shoving her spoon up her own nose. Resisting the very real temptation, she resorts to wincing her way through mentally reliving the dating disasters of the previous year until she remembers why she’s subjecting herself to this torture.

Ruby, Belle, Mary Margaret and David practically frogmarch her to the table in the quad that they’ve designated as a suitably public spot.

Her ‘friends’ (she’s definitely questioning that term at this point) drape the sign ceremoniously over her neck, the bold lettering settling across her chest.  
“Remember, you have to stay here when you’re not in class, you have to have the sign on at all times when you’re here, and you can leave at 4:30 when it gets dark,” Belle reminds her, with an expression somewhere between amusement and apology. 

“Have a great day!” Ruby crows across the quad as she heads for her class. Emma slumps her head against the table in resignation.

 

The first few hours aren’t too terrible. It’s the first day back so campus is full of students buzzing back and forth, barely glancing at her. Emma had plenty of practice being as invisible as possible growing up, and it’s certainly coming in use now as she manages to blend into the background. 

When the first class of the day lets out, her luck starts to wear thin as the crowds dissipate and people start to look and point. Mary Margaret catches her eye with an encouraging thumbs up as she passes, but as soon as Emma notices a group of three of four freshmen heading towards her, she grabs her things and makes a beeline for the nearest building. 

Hiding in a bathroom stall avoiding hugs from strangers, is definitely not how she wanted to start the semester, and the worst part is that she agreed to this whole nightmare. She dawdles, sitting on the lid of the toilet and scrolling through Facebook for a good fifteen minutes before she decides she’d better suck it up and get back outside before one of her friends walks through the quad and notices she’s gone. 

“Emma!” 

She jumps as Ruby accosts her outside the bathroom door.

“I said no cheating!” Ruby’s eyes are accusatory and Emma rolls hers in response.

“I was just using the bathroom, Ruby, calm down.”

“David said you were gone for at least twenty minutes.”

“You left David to spy on me?” 

“He wasn’t spying!” Ruby insists, “Besides, it was his own idea. He wanted to stay in case he needed to defend your honour, or something else ridiculously charming.”

It’s so typically David that Emma genuinely laughs. He designated himself as her protector when he and Mary Margaret basically adopted her in freshman year, and he’s been her self-assigned protective older brother ever since. She loves him for it, but he can go a little overboard, going into dad-mode. Case in point: he’s apparently been watching out for her like some kind of bodyguard since 8am.

“Fine, whatever,” she sighs, replacing her sign and letting Ruby walk her back out to the table she was sitting at, “Tell David I can handle myself and to go get some food or something instead of freezing his ass off out here in the name of my honour.”

“Sure thing,” Ruby grins and turns to head off before spinning back round to face her again, a mischievous glint in her eye, “And, Ems, if you try to bail on this again, I swear I will set you up with that guy from our Psych class with the permanent cold.”

Point made, she turns and practically skips off to class as Emma recoils at the idea of having to be anywhere within three feet of ‘Sneezy’, as she’s privately nicknamed him.  
Speaking of classmates she really doesn’t want to see, she rolls her eyes as she notices Eyeliner Guy, aka Killian Jones who sat behind her in her English class last semester, making his way across the quad towards her. 

“Alright, Swan?” he grins as he approaches. She scowls. She doesn’t even know him, except for that one time he tried to get her attention by whispering her surname repeatedly until she turned around to glare at him and he asked to borrow a pen like he hadn’t just annoyed her until she wanted to punch him in the face.  
“Getting into the New Year’s spirit, I see,” he observes, undeterred by her stony facial expression.

“Not by choice,” she grumbles.

“Well, the sign on your chest does, in fact, appear to be offering ‘free hugs’, however much the lady protests,” he smirks, leering towards her. His face is kind of stupidly attractive, even with that expression and it only fuels Emma’s irritation. She folds her arms over her chest, covering up the letters. Just because her friends made her wear a sign offering free hugs, doesn’t mean she actually has to give them. 

“Yeah, well, tough luck buddy, I’m closed for business,” she retorts, ripping off the sign and stalking off to her class. To her relief, her professor lets out a little late, meaning it’s almost 4:30 by the time she leaves the building and she’s free to head back to her apartment, and sulk with Netflix and hot chocolate, trying not to think about having to endure the whole experience again for the next four days.

 

Tuesday is absolutely freezing. Emma’s been sitting at the table with the sign round her neck for less than an hour before she can barely feel her toes, even through three pairs of socks. Hunching down into her carefully constructed scarf-nest, she tries to concentrate on the novel she has to read for her English 200 class. She’s almost looking forward to her classes just to get out of the cold.

The upside of the freezing weather is that everybody’s too busy rushing as quickly as possible from one building to the next to pay her much attention, and a few glares at the onlookers who do notice her seem to do the trick in preventing them from actually approaching. Which is probably why she’s let her guard down enough that she doesn’t realise anyone’s there until a paper cup slides across the table in front of her. 

Killian Jones is grinning down at her, wrapped in a thick wool scarf and holding a gloved hand out in a gesture towards the cup.

“Thought you could probably do with a nice warm drink, Swan. It’s bloody cold out here.” He shivers, the tips of his ears pink from the cold where his hat has slid upwards.  
She eyes the cup suspiciously, then looks back up at him, eyes narrowing.

“Is this an attempt at bribing me for hugs?”

“Just a hot chocolate, nothing more.”

Emma’s pretty good at knowing when people are lying, and he shakes his head so earnestly she has to believe him. Besides, her fingers are practically icicles and the idea of wrapping them around a hot cup which happens to contain her favourite drink is more than enough reason to disregard her suspicions.

She takes the cup gratefully, taking a long sip of the hot liquid and sighing as the warmth spreads through her chest.

“Thanks.”

“I admire your dedication to the cause.” He smirks, obviously a reference to her complete lack of enthusiasm yesterday.

“Like I said, it’s not by choice.”

“All the more reason to admire your perseverance.”

His praise seems so genuine that Emma can feel herself flushing a little in response, hoping her cheeks are hidden enough by her scarf that he doesn’t notice. Her stomach rumbles, causing her to redden a little more.

“Have you eaten today, love?” Killian asks, his eyes widening with concern, and she notices just how startlingly bright blue they are.

“I didn’t have time for breakfast,” she shrugs, “I’ll just get something to eat in my next class.”

“Now, now, Swan, breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” he teases, before a thoughtful look crosses his face and he excuses himself with an “I’ll be right back, love.”  
Not more than ten minutes later he returns with a brown paper bag, presenting it to her proudly.

“Grilled cheese and onion rings,” he grins.

Emma snatches the bag and pulls it to her face, letting out an honest-to-god moan at the smell. When she looks up to thank Killian, his face looks almost shell-shocked for a moment, tongue swiping across his lips before he hastily replaces his usual cheeky expression. 

“How in the hell do you know all my favourite things?” 

Killian snatches a few onion rings from the bag and simply waggles his eyebrows at her as she begins shovelling them hastily into her mouth around bites of deliciously stringy grilled cheese.

“You’re something of an open book, love… And I may have seen you eating onion rings in class multiple times last semester.”

“I didn’t think the addiction was that bad,” she groans, laughing in spite of herself and licking the grease from her ungloved fingers. 

They sit in silence while Emma continues scarfing down her food and occasionally lets him steal an onion ring. 

“It’s for a bet,” she explains after a while, figuring he probably deserves some form of explanation by way of thanks.

“Ah, well, that explains it.”

She turns to face him, where he’s settled on the seat next to her.

“Does it?”

“You seem like a pretty determined, lass – Swan!”

He yelps as she abruptly stands and pulls him against her forcefully, spinning them round.

“It’s about bloody time,” he smirks, eyebrows raising at her suggestively.

She shoves him off, a little more breathlessly than she would have liked.

“People were looking. I needed to hide the sign.” 

She gestures in the direction where her potential attackers have just disappeared around the corner. Killian follows her gaze, scanning the empty courtyard before turning back to face her, a ridiculous grin spreading across his rosy cheeks. 

“Well, that’s a plausible excuse for grabbing me, but next time don’t stand on ceremony.”

Emma rolls her eyes, plopping back down at the table.

“I just want to win this bet and go home.”

“And what does winning entail?” He’s utterly incorrigible, still grinning at her.

“Getting my friends’ to stop with their horrible matchmaking attempts,” she shoots back, pointedly, wanting to wipe that expression off his face.

“Ah,” he nods, “So, far from what I would consider to be a well-deserved hug by this point, you were merely taking advantage of me as a human shield. You wound me, Swan.”

He doesn’t sound wounded, he sounds even more entertained, if possible. And he certainly looks it, with his hair swept messily over his head where his hat is slipping off and his eyes glittering and cold-flushed cheeks and pointed ears and the smile tugging back the curves of his lips. He raises his eyebrows when she doesn’t respond and she realises she’s been staring, her own cheeks pinking as she leans back in her chair, away from him.

“Exactly.”

“I can certainly see why you’d be willing to lose all your fingers and toes to frostbite for such a wager.”

And they’re back to the easy banter which carries their conversation safely forward until Emma checks her phone and realises the time.

“Shit – I’ve got class in ten minutes!” 

She gathers her book quickly, pulling the sign over her head and shoving both things into her backpack unceremoniously.

“Me too, lass, which way might you be headed?”

“Arts building.”

Killian grins again. “It seems our courses are charted along the same path, love. Permit me to escort you to your building.”

Emma snorts.

“Do you have to speak like you’re three hundred years old?”

“I simply believe in good form, love.”

She rolls her eyes again but waits for him while he grabs the bag from their lunch and throws it in the trash can before they start walking in the direction of the Arts building together.

“This is me,” she announces when they reach the stairs to the second floor.

“I enjoyed our afternoon together.”

Killian’s abrupt sincerity takes her off guard, her breath catching in her throat a little at the rapid switch from the playful mood.

“Yeah, well, thanks for the drink. And the food.”

“And don’t forget my excellent services as a human shield.”

Emma laughs.

“Those too. Bye, Killian.”

“Goodbye, love. See you tomorrow?”

“Only if you bring hot chocolate. With cinnamon this time.”

“As you wish.”

He winks at her as he turns and strolls down the hallway to his own class, and she’s left standing in the stairwell telling herself her face is simply heating up from reacclimatising to the warmth indoors and wondering why the hell she thought he was going to hug her before he left. Or, worse, why she feels like she wouldn’t have minded so much. 

 

Mary Margaret greets her enthusiastically when she arrives to meet her friends for dinner after class.

“Emma! I was so worried you might have died of hypothermia!” she exclaims, pulling Emma over to sit down at the table where the rest of their group are waiting. 

“It was a narrow escape,” Emma shudders. Her toes and fingers are still slightly swollen from the change of temperature after sitting in the freezing cold quad for most of the day. Sensing an opportunity, she moves in.

“And I am not doing that again tomorrow. I’m not losing my limbs to frostbite over a stupid bet. I kept my side of the deal for two days and that’s enough,” she insists, swiping some of David’s fries.

“You haven’t kept your side of the deal if you haven’t actually hugged anyone,” Ruby cuts in.

“Well, she was distracted with someone’s company for most of today,” Belle smiles teasingly.

Emma narrows her eyes at the unexpected traitor and tries to act like nobody heard Belle’s words, but her friends are already swooping on the information like a pack of seagulls.

“Really?” Ruby asks gleefully, her eyes fixed on Emma like a wolf about to devour its prey.

“Killian Jones,” Belle informs the table.

“You know him?” The words are out of Emma’s mouth before she realises what she’s done and then Mary Margaret squeals and Ruby laughs triumphantly and David looks like he’s not sure whether he should be getting ready for a fight or joining in with the group’s delight.

“He works in the library with me,” Belle explains, “Apart from when he’s keeping Emma company in the freezing cold with a picnic, apparently.”

Emma’s always found Belle incredibly sweet, but she could probably murder her by this point.

“A picnic?” Mary Margaret squeals again.

“I made him get me onion rings because I was hungry,” Emma defends, wanting to get away from this topic as soon as possible. “Anyway, that’s not the point of this conversation. The point is that this bet is done and I am not sitting out in the cold for another three days.”

“So you forfeit?” Ruby smirks, “Because I hear ‘Sneezy’ is free Friday evening.” She lets her voice trail off teasingly and Emma shouts her resounding “No” so loudly that everyone at the table next to them jumps.

“Perhaps we could compromise?” Belle suggests, obviously finally starting to feel a little guilty for her revelation about Killian.

“Okay,” Mary Margaret agrees, “If you actually give someone a free hug tomorrow, Emma, you can still win the bet without completing the week.”

David voices his agreement with the plan and a little more persuasion from Belle convinces Ruby to go along with it too.

Emma can feel her extremities practically singing in relief as the conversation moves on. One little hug for the sake of her freedom (and now her fingers). She can do that, right?

 

Emma arrives at the table on Wednesday morning to find Killian already sitting there, holding a paper cup which he hands to her as soon as she reaches him.

“One piping hot hot chocolate, complete with cinnamon,” he announces.

“Thanks,” she responds, taking it and sitting down next to him.

“Glad to see you’re still intact,” he jokes, reaching forward in an awkward gesture which ends up with him pointing at her fingers but almost looked as though he was going to take them in his own and thought better of it. Her heart stutters involuntarily at the thought.

“I changed the bet,” she informs him.

“Aye?”

“Yeah. All I have to do now is to actually give a free hug to one stranger and I’m free from matchmaking hell forever.”

“Really?” He looks at her with an expression she can’t quite place but it quickly splits into a cheeky smirk as he holds up his arms towards her.

“Ready then, love?”

His expression is encouraging, but her well-built walls and defences kick in and she finds herself shifting backwards before she realises she’s doing so.

“We’re not strangers now. It doesn’t count.” She makes the excuse quickly, instinctively, and tries to ignore that his laugh doesn’t quite reach his eyes as he drops his arms.

“It would never have worked between us anyway,” he responds easily, and she ignores the swooping in her stomach that feels irrationally like disappointment at his stupid joke.  
Killian stands, making a show of sighing and checking his watch.

“Alas, I have a class to attend. Best of luck with your bet. Make sure you pick a handsome stranger, though I’m sure you’ll not find one as dazzling as myself,” he chuckles, giving her a wave as he leaves with a little jog across the quad.

She watches him go until he gets swallowed up by the crowd of students, then turns back to her hot chocolate, mentally steeling herself. The payoff is more than worth the price, but her interaction with Killian just now has reminded her firmly of her aversion to physical affection and the concept of offering a hug to a complete stranger seems once again insurmountable.

 

Emma tries, she really does, but then there’s the incident around lunchtime when she finally lets one guy close enough to almost put his arms around her and her reflexes kick in, knee coming upwards to meet his balls. Nobody even attempts to approach her after that and she resigns herself wearily to two more days of sitting at this stupid table.

She’s made it halfway, and the weather is supposed to improve marginally for the rest of the week, so she can damn well stick it out for the rest. The foster system didn’t raise a quitter. 

When the numbers on her phone finally tick over to 4:30 she stands, wiggling her toes to regain some feeling and shoving the sign into her backpack, relieved to reach the end of her torture for the day.

She’s swinging it onto her shoulder and already starting to move towards the concrete steps down in the direction of her apartment when an unmistakable voice interrupts her.  
“You aren’t still offering those free hugs, are you, Swan?”

It’s the softness of Killian’s accent which makes her turn around, finding him standing next to the bench she’s just vacated with a curious sadness in his eyes.

“Killian? Are you okay?”

“Just a bad day, love. Nothing to worry about. Although, as I said, a little comfort wouldn’t go amiss.”

Emma’s heart squeezes at the monotone of his voice, so different from his usual lilting, teasing eloquence. He looks so forlorn as he leans against the table with one arm that she takes a couple of steps towards him. His uncharacteristic aversion of his eyes from hers brings her closer still.

“Killian, hey, what’s wrong?” she asks, her concern making her voice quieter and gentler than usual.

He lets out a long sigh, still keeping his eyes on the table as he responds.

“Today happens to be the anniversary of the sailing accident which claimed my brother’s life,” he explains, his voice barely above a murmur, “I’ve had time to make peace with it for the most part, but it doesn’t exactly make for the best of moods and then Professor Gold decided to make an example of my Chem final from last semester to inform my class how not to go about his classwork and, well…” he shrugs, gesturing sadly to himself as if to sum up his current melancholic state.

Emma’s head is reeling with the emotional impact of his revelation, but the instinct to run hasn’t reared its head as it usually does in these situations.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, her arm reaching out for her hand to land gently on his shoulder. He lifts his own hand up to cover it, stroking her fingers tenderly. 

“I’ll be alright, love,” he reassures her, shrugging a little again, his voice taking on a slight edge in a defensive manoeuvre she knows far too well.

“I know you don’t want pity,” she says quickly, “But I hope I can be of some comfort.” The words sound almost foreign in her mouth, unused as she is to such demonstrative expressions of affection, but they slide off her tongue in a way which can’t feel anything but right.

Killian meets her eyes for the first time since he arrived, and the expression she sees there makes her breathing fall into an unsteady rhythm. Overwhelmed with feelings she can’t quite put a name to, Emma slides her hand down his shoulder, stepping forward and bringing the other around his back until both her arms are around him. She feels him shift as his own arms come up to slowly wrap around her back, holding her, warm and steady.

It’s possibly the third hug she’s ever experienced that she can remember, and certainly the first since she was a little girl. She’s hyperaware of the position of his arms against her back, the weirdness of the experience keeping her drawn back slightly from his body as she takes in the peculiar sensations. A minute or two passes and the discomfort slowly, gently creeps away, stealing her fears like a thief in the night, and she finds herself leaning closer in until she’s flush against his chest, his heartbeat thrumming unsteadily in her ear. His arms pull tighter in response and she feels his chin drop against her head. 

They stand there, hugging, for an indeterminate amount of time, the world turning steadily unnoticed around them.

Eventually, she feels Killian draw back a little way and her hands tighten around his arms, unwilling to let the feeling go now that it’s started to feel so comfortable.

“Emma,” he whispers, and her name breathed out in his soft voice makes her tilt her head upwards to meet his gaze. In the dim purple light of the final moments of dusk, his eyes seem to shine towards her own with an impossible affection. Her heart is thudding rapidly in her ears and she wants to pull herself back against his chest to hear his own matching the rhythm. But then his eyes flicker down and instead she finds herself drawing up on her toes, leaning closer and closer until her lips press against his. 

It takes a second before he responds and he begins to kiss her back, mouth moving gently over her own. Her hands slide upwards again to clasp behind his neck and he reaches behind her back to pull her into him, sighing into her mouth as they both pause for breath, before resuming the kiss more firmly. His tongue darts out to meet her lips and she parts them willingly, allowing him entrance into her mouth.

A shrill squeal from behind them has them suddenly pulling apart from each other and Emma turns to glare at its owner, but can only manage a half-hearted attempt as she sees Mary Margaret, Ruby, Belle and David standing at the top of the steps and all beaming at them (well, David’s managing a reluctantly pleased smile at least).

“The bet’s off,” Emma declares, unable to help the smile pulling at the edges of her mouth as she realises Killian’s arms have resumed their position comfortably around her waist, “Now go away.”

Thankfully her friends have enough tact to do so, although all of them share gleeful glances which she knows means she’s in for the third degree of interrogation later tonight.  
She makes sure they’ve truly disappeared before she turns back to Killian, relieved to see a genuine smile has returned to his face.

“I should certainly say you won, love,” he teases, nodding down at their linked arms. 

Emma lets her smile spread widely across her face as she pulls him back towards her in a hug, and he drops a kiss to her head.

“You bet I did,” she laughs into his chest.


End file.
